Young Thug - Songwriters, Facts and Childhood

Young Thug was born Jeffery Lamar Williams in Atlanta, Georgia on 16th August, 1991. His mother had eleven children of which he is the second youngest. Together their family lived at the demolished Jonesboro South projects.

His siblings have different biological fathers. He and his sister, who is the youngest of all siblings, have the same father. His mother had a difficult time providing for so many children.

He grew up in the midst of crime. His elder brother was shot before his eyes and one of his brothers is still serving his term after being accused of murder.

He attended elementary school up to sixth grade. He was expelled from school after breaking his teacher’s arm and was put into juvenile detention for four years.

During his teens he developed bad habits and began gambling like his brothers, and loved the thrill of taking risks. Soon he got into drug addiction and violence.

By the time he was seventeen, he became a father. It was around this time that he started recognizing his talent for music and rapping. He knew just then that he wouldn’t be one to live a life of poverty any longer.

Rapper Gucci Mane was highly impressed by Young Thug’s first mixtape titled ‘I Came from Nothing’. Finding his work unique and identifiable, he quickly signed him onto his label.

In 2013, he released another mixtape called ‘1017 Thug’ under Gucci’s banner. His songs proved a hit, and he was listed on ‘Pitchfork: Albums of the Year and received a good review from ‘Complex’.

His song ‘Pichacho’ was voted the best track in his mixtape, and made its way into ‘Rolling Stone’ and ‘Spin’s list of best songs in the year 2013. ‘The Guardian’ too mentioned the mixtape among the five best tapes of 2013.

Later that year, he released his first single ‘Stoner’ followed by ‘Danny Glover’. Both songs were a hit and were remixed by many known rappers and DJ’s. Unfortunately, he disapproved of the remixes to his song.

Fortifying his position in the music industry, he soon began collaborating with big names such as Alex Tumay, Danny Brown, Trick Daddy and even Travis Scott.

The year 2014 was one of Young’s most rewarding ones. Following some speculation of signing a record deal of 1.5 million dollars with Cash Money Records, it was announced by Birdman that he had only signed a management deal with the label.

He recorded several songs under ‘1017 Brick Squad’ with Kayne West, Rich Homie and Chief Keef, making it to the cover of ‘The Fader’.

He announced in March 2014 that his debut album would soon hit the market and will be titled ‘Carter 6’, as a testimonial to Thug’s admiration for Lil Wayne’s hit album ‘Tha Carter’.

He quickly began recording new songs owing to his freestyle ways. Unfortunately, a data glitch caused a leakage of his album songs. It went viral and in order to resolve the problem, he had to immediately release two mixtapes - Slime Season and Slime Season 2 to recover the loss.

To add to his misfortune, Lil Wayne wasn’t too pleased with Young’s statement that he wanted to dedicate his first album to him and the matter was later settled in court.

Thereafter, Young released a mixtape instead of an album and named it ‘Barter 6’, later changing it to ‘HiTunes’ under the ‘Atlantic’ record label.

After the release, he had a meeting with Kayne, during which Kayne was highly impressed by Young’s unique style and even compared him with Bob Marley. In 2015, they announced that they would do an album together, but haven’t yet confirmed any dates.

In 2016, Young released his first ‘extended play’ or EP called ‘I’m Up’ once again hitting the music charts in America. He went on to release another mix tape ‘Slime Season 3’ which brought an end to the leaked tape fiasco.

Mid-year, he organized a tour along with ‘Rich the Kid’, ‘TM88’ and ‘Dae Dae’ for his mixtape ‘HiTunes’ in the united States. He became a fashion icon during the tour and made it to ‘Calvin Klein’s fall collection 2016’.

With record label offers piled up, he is working on recording a mixtape called ‘Jeffrey’ and plans on forming his own record label called ‘YSL Records’ sometime soon.

All of his mixtapes have been a hit, but one of them has done exceptionally well. ‘Barter 6’ was ranked number 22 on U.S. Billboard 200. Some critics have argued that the album did well because of Young’s dispute with Lil Wayne, whereas others have claimed it to be a success because of his unconventional rapping style.

His most famous single ‘Picacho’, which was not originally meant to be a single, made it to the top 100 tracks in both ‘Rolling Stone’ and ‘Pitchfork’, and was spotted amongst the top 50 songs by ‘Spin’.

His song ‘Stoner’ went viral again in 2014 after Wale created an unauthorized remix. The remix grabbed so much attention that the original track by Young began doing the rounds once again on music charts.

In 2013 he was placed among the ‘25 New Rappers to Watch Out For’ by the bi-monthly fashion magazine – Complex.

In 2014, Young Thug was nominated at the ‘BET hip-hop Awards’ in the category of ‘Who Blew Up’, ‘Best Hip-Hop Style’ and ‘Best Club Banger- for Stoner’.

The next year he was nominated at the BET Awards in ‘Coca-Cola Viewers’ Choice Award’ for his song ‘Throw Sum Mo’ along with Nicki Minaj and Rae Sremmurd.

At twenty five, he has six children from four women. He is currently engaged to Jerrika Karlae. She is the manager of a swimsuit line.

Although Thug is now a celebrity, he hasn’t been able keep himself away from the world of crime. In 2015, he was arrested on charges of ‘terrorist threats’ when he threatened to end a guard’s life at an Atlanta mall.

The loathing between Lil Wayne and Young Thug alongside Birdman and Jimmy Winfrey went to the next level when the three rappers were charged with conspiring murder after Winfrey opened fire at one of Wayne’s events.

Known for his atypical and free-spirited mannerism, Young Thug has never written down the lyrics of his songs. Instead he plans his lyrics by drawing shapes and designs.